A Welcome for Immigrants Turns to Resentment

By ROBERT REINHOLD,

Published: August 25, 1993

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 24—
Rich and poor, legally or not, they came to Southern California by the millions over the last decade, foreigners in search of a better life or political refuge. The immigrants were mostly welcome at first, filling unwanted jobs in a robust economy, opening businesses and sweetening the good life in sunny California by working cheaply as maids, gardeners and dishwashers.

But today the welcome has worn out.

Immigrants are now widely perceived as an economic drag on taxpayers, sucking up health, school, police and other services while spreading crime, dirt and disease. With its economy struggling through the worst slump since the Great Depression, its cities battered, its government services breaking down, California, and particularly Southern California, has begun to say "no" to more immigrants.

"Illegal immigration is the hottest issue in the state," said Assemblyman Bill Morrow, who represents an affluent district stretching through Orange and San Diego Counties. "We've got to say to the Federal Government, 'If you don't close the border, we will.' "

Politicians ranging from conservative Republicans like Mr. Morrow to Democrats like California's two Senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, have been tripping over each other to offer new ideas for controlling immigration. On Aug. 17, the two Senators toured the border near San Diego with Attorney General Janet Reno and saw the capture of would-be illegal immigrants. "We've got to close our borders," said Ms. Boxer in a recent interview.

Some days earlier, Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican facing a tough battle for re-election next year, made a three-day tour of Southern California, demanding that Washington reverse what he called "the rewards" for illegal immigrants by ending their medical and education benefits and calling for a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to their American-born children. Because immigration is a Federal responsibility, Governor Wilson says there is little the state can do to stem the tide.

The complaints are based mostly on the assumption that immigrants are lured here by generous public services. In fact, immigration experts and the immigrants themselves say, the main reason they come is that they need jobs and Americans are willing to hire them. And few of the remedies offered so far propose to intensify penalties on Americans who employ illegal aliens. Land of Immigrants

Nowhere are the complaints more pointed than here in California, which absorbed more than a third of the country's legal immigrants over the last decade, more than half of the refugees, and now has half of the estimated 1.3 million illegal immigrants, mostly in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

How Southern California absorbs this wave of immigrants, mostly brown or yellow-skinned, and whether the huge flow prompts the kind of anti-immigrant violence seen recently in Germany, France and Japan, are crucial questions. The answers could presage the experience elsewhere as the United States becomes a land of ethnic diversity.

But for now, the argument by many experts that illegal immigrants do work Americans are unwilling to do, contribute more than they receive, and add to the cultural mosaic is heard less frequently as the economy here continues its slump.

Anti-immigrant fever has also taken root in the state legislature. Twenty-one bills aimed at immigrants, some patently unconstitutional, were introduced this year, mostly by conservatives who once favored immigration as good for the economy and a deterrent to unionized labor.

Many of the bills were meant to deny public housing, health care, welfare, education and drivers licenses to illegal aliens, and most either failed or have stalled for now. Hispanic lawmakers and other opponents of such legislation say that while immigrants do use health and welfare services, they come to California for one reason only: jobs. To deny them services, they argue, could cause public health problems that would lead to even greater public expense.

Some of the debate has been tinged with racism. In May, Assemblyman William J. Knight, a Republican from Palmdale, a Los Angeles suburb, caused an uproar in the legislature by circulating a piece of doggerel from a constituent mocking Hispanic immigrants. It read, in part:

Everything is mucho good.

Soon we own the neighborhood.

We have a hobby -- it's called breeding.

Welfare pay for baby feeding. The Economy A Smaller Part Of a Smaller Pie

As recently as 1985, an Urban Institute study concluded that Mexican immigration was a great boon to the California economy, meaning lower prices for goods and services, low inflation and low unemployment. But today, fewer and fewer Californians agree with that assessment.

"The economy has created the reality and perception of a zero-sum game in which citizens see themselves as pitted against immigrants," said Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California at San Diego. "They see the quality of life declining, the state government going bankrupt. They assume it is because too many people are flooding into the state."

The pressures and stress are no less pointed for the immigrants themselves, who find themselves caught between an increasingly hostile host country and a cruel economy in their homelands.